ronwagn + 6,290 November 24, 2019 (edited) Putin: ‘We’ll Never Frack’ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/11/20/putin-well-never-frack/#6ee29583f014 Putin has opposed American fracking and influenced all of Europe over the last eight years. Propaganda from Russia and OPEC. Our media has joined right in. RCW Edited November 27, 2019 by ronwagn reference Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129 November 24, 2019 How the Hell would you Frack in the Great white north? Water freezes last I checked... It is bad enough in N. Dakota. So, Putin is right, they will not be Fracking in Russia... at least not as the common person knows it today. I know ppl have used/discussed using CO2, but.... I suppose, burn CH4 to get CO2 then frack with at extremely high pressures? Or compress it from the air... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Justin H + 3 November 24, 2019 Your assuming that they actually have to Just like SA who is only looking at hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, they may not need secondary recovery at this point. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129 November 24, 2019 1 hour ago, Justin H said: Your assuming that they actually have to Just like SA who is only looking at hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, they may not need secondary recovery at this point. Well, Russia does not have to. They like Iran/Qatar have so much NG they do not know how much they truly have. In either case, centuries. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
A/Plague + 50 sU November 24, 2019 6 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said: How the Hell would you Frack in the Great white north? Water freezes last I checked... It is bad enough in N. Dakota. So, Putin is right, they will not be Fracking in Russia... at least not as the common person knows it today. I know ppl have used/discussed using CO2, but.... I suppose, burn CH4 to get CO2 then frack with at extremely high pressures? Or compress it from the air... specify .. where does the water freeze? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Gerry Maddoux + 3,627 GM November 24, 2019 Putin is so full of it! I happen to know a lot about fracking because it began in my backyard: Hugoton, Kansas field. They used gelled gasoline (napalm). It didn't work well there but it did in Oklahoma, particular in the Stephens area. Rosneft, the Kremlin-backed oil company, has used vertical fracking for years in Siberia. In fact, at one point prior to the sanctions, Schlumberger had several--maybe a dozen--crews fracking in Siberia. Then in 2014, when OPEC decided to ruin frackers in the US, Russia used horizontal drilling because their production had gone to hell. Part of that, they discovered, was recoverable only if they . . . . . fracked. In short, fracturing rock in the Siberian shale field rescued them. I'm not entirely sure how they handle the water issue--that's a great comment--but they sure as heck fracked in Siberia. Not only did it save Russia, but it saved Schlumberger too. So much of this is laughable. It's one of the few great things about getting very old--you can call out bullsh*t in ancient history. 2 3 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 November 24, 2019 18 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said: How the Hell would you Frack in the Great white north? Water freezes last I checked... It is bad enough in N. Dakota. So, Putin is right, they will not be Fracking in Russia... at least not as the common person knows it today. I know ppl have used/discussed using CO2, but.... I suppose, burn CH4 to get CO2 then frack with at extremely high pressures? Or compress it from the air... Read the article please. They already frack! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129 November 25, 2019 5 hours ago, ronwagn said: Read the article please. They already frack! 🙄 The Question is not whether they frack or not.... The great white north is not frozen all year round and nearly 100% of every well drilled for last 40 years has been "fracked" to some extent if you use the term loosely. Maybe some deep sea bed well has not been fracked somewhere as they are still finding some large pools to suck out of. I thought this was self explanatory, but here goes: The question when working up north in the bitter cold, is always and has forever always been, how LONG can you work? Working a couple months a year does not profit make on equipment. Get this, no one Fracks in North Dakota in January/February when it is 20 below either... Of course the other 9 months of the year... PS: There is no "article" 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Gerry Maddoux + 3,627 GM November 25, 2019 9 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said: Get this, no one Fracks in North Dakota in January/February when it is 20 below either... Of course the other 9 months of the year... One of the three reasons the Bakken has languished in comparison to the Delaware, where you can frack year-round without problems with temperature. The wellbore economics are just as good in North Dakota, at least in the core. But there's no doubt it's a long ways up there and gets mighty cold, and is also a long way by pipeline to about anywhere. There are several good features of the cold Bakken, one being that less water comes up with the oil, as does less natural gas (which has become a nuisance). The Arctic Ice Circle warms up quite a bit during the summer too. I didn't mean to make a stir, but it's no secret that Schlumberger was as busy as a little beaver fracking Siberian wells there for a while--vertical wells--and then the sanctions bit in and they had to remove themselves because they're a Houston-based company. But when the 2014 suicide mission that the Saudis waged nearly killed off Russian oil as well as US shale, Putin picked up on the drilling concept pretty quickly and they began drilling horizontal wells. Alas, they discovered that there was no way to make those things work without fracturing some rock. If I had to guess, I'd bet that Putin handles it thusly: gets a bunch of DUC's drilled during the long Siberian winter, then fracks like a madman during the short summer. Putin is a propaganda machine. He knows this stuff gets under our skin. Hell, it gets under my skin (which is very thin now that I'm old). Some of you guys get under my skin too, especially when I say something stupid and get corrected, but I'm in this lifelong learning program and I dearly love oil and gas, so I usually learn more and frack my brain whenever somebody challenges me. Just like Putin's wells, fracking me makes me more productive, though the decline curve is dangerously abrupt. What I do know, from my grandfather, is that right after WWII, they pumped water out of the nearest creek to the Hugoton Oil Field in southwestern Kansas. Simultaneously, they pumped gelled gasoline (gasoline with benzene and maybe toluene added to it, which makes napalm) down the hole. Since water and gelled gasoline are immiscible, I imagine they made one hell of a mess of it. The thing didn't work very well either, according to my grandfather. But they took that over to Stephens Oklahoma and it worked pretty well. That was the first lesson on fracking: some wells are quite susceptible to it and other just aren't. It should be noted that Stephens was limestone/dolomite/sandstone, while up in the Hugoton was more marl, which nobody has figured out how to handle (I have some in the Eaglebine and it's perishing, so if anybody knows more about this let me know--it's been dead money for years). Anyway, that's all I know on this subject. Ever since oil was discovered, people have been dismayed at the decline curve--even of many conventional wells. To stir them up and bring them back to life, they've put everything under the sun down the wellbore. Glenn Peale, the early designer of the rotary rig, was a friend of mine when I was growing up. He drank hard, was kind to his friends, and had a creative mind. He laughed one time as he grilled steaks on a huge tractor wheel covered by a grate he'd welded and the whole thing turned by a diesel engine puttering off around the corner. We were drinking scotch, which wasn't good for me as a youth or as an adult. Anyway, during the grilling time, he told about trying to bring a whole covey of spent wells back to life. One of the things he used was gelled gasoline--and that was quite some time before the Vietnam War. Another thing he used was toilet paper. HaHa. So, in the grand scheme of things, pumping a bunch of water and Wisconsin White down a hole, adding in a bunch of chemicals to prevent corrosion of the casing and closure of the fissures isn't all that crazy. Somewhere down the line, old Putin grabbed onto the concept. And while the little bastard mocks the US for fracking, and people all over the world listen to it and read the headlines--just like they do about that little Swedish girl who doesn't think we should even be drilling holes in the earth, even though she travels on fossil-fuel-powered machines--and the Green Movement is taking hold. People like AOC and even Sleepy Joe Biden don't know that, rather than carbon dioxide, sulfur and nitrogen oxides are the devils coming from fossil fuels, or that they can be mitigated, and they don't care, for this became all part of a giant propaganda machine much like Putin's long ago. To be fair about this, the oil and gas industry has done next to nothing to educate the public that they're trying to do the best they can. Oh well, I tend to ramble and this has gone on way too long and I don't even belong on this board because this wasn't my day job but as I said I'm still fracking my brain and the poor spent thing needs all the help it can get so I just keep pumping things into it and out comes a whole bunch of effluent that is similar to what comes out of the shale wells: some is of good quality and some has to be disposed of as quickly as possible. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PE Scott + 563 SC November 25, 2019 51 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said: To be fair about this, the oil and gas industry has done next to nothing to educate the public that they're trying to do the best they can. This is something that bothers me. I think part of it involves the oil industry constantly being on the defensive, making it difficult to have time for a proactive message. People on this forum have made a point about why it's difficult to meet climate activists half way though, that being that their argument is all or nothing. Give an inch and they take a mile sort of thing. Still, I think there is still room to reduce or negate emissions without a moratorium on fossil fuels. In fact, I think if more effort was put into learning how work with the fossil fuel industry to reduce emissions, progress towards a carbon neutral future would be far more feasible than our current route. I don't care how great the next gen of EVs is ir how much off-shore wind power north America makes. Without a complete 180 by emerging countries, we'll be adding fossil fuel generation capacity and industry for the next 100 years. So, to really have an impact on GLOBAL pollution, we're going to have to work on separating out pollutants at the source and actively sequestering them from our atmosphere. I'm rambling, my point is that more could be done working with the industry than against it. Every dollar spent in pursuit of a moratorium on fossil fuels is not just wasted, but actively hindering progress. Pushing the industry out of North America and other developed countries only means the production will take place elsewhere with far less concern for the enviroment or safe operations. All of this feels so obvious to me, yet the exact opposite is what I see being pursued by leftist in the U.S. 1 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
J.R. Ewing + 19 CW November 25, 2019 12 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said: PS: There is no "article" Please allow me to google that for you... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/11/20/putin-well-never-frack/#2b5c3e723f01 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Gerry Maddoux + 3,627 GM November 25, 2019 Since I'm a Luddite by genetic predisposition, not by choice, here's the entire article I found on Russian fracking . . . from about the crash. The Global Spread of Advanced Fracking Technology Is Winning the Oil War by Kent Harrington JAN 5, 2016 COMMENTS (0) AICHE Topics: Energy Fossil Fuels Shale Gas Business Strategy and Economics (Sustainability & Environment) Energy (Sustainability & Environment) Share This Post: 5 1/4 in the series The Growth of Global Fracking In November 2014, OPEC and Saudi Arabia started a price war against the US shale industry (and other high-end producers) by refusing to rein in output and fighting for market share instead. This should have driven some shale oil producers bankrupt and kept North American shale oil from depressing prices on the global oil market. But that hasn't happened yet. A year later and still waiting for the drillers to buckle, OPEC doubled down and increased oil production again. This has driven oil prices down to about $40/bbl, their lowest levels since 2004. Along with the decision to plunge into an expensive war in Yemen straining the kingdom’s budget, Saudi Arabia has been forced to tap its foreign reserves after burning through US$100 billion. Looking at a bleak future of low oil prices, Saudi Arabia's King Salman announced his first budget, which plans to radically cut subsidies and sell stakes in state-owned companies to compensate for the precipitous drop in oil revenue. The Kingdom is also raising domestic fuel, power and water prices (from a very low level), according to the official Saudi Press Agency. Clearly, this doesn't smell like victory, and from a production standpoint, by pitting itself against unconventional oil and its disruptive technologies spreading a tsunami of oil across the world, OPEC's reactive strategy could end in failure. An arch competitor Russia, one of OPEC's arch competitors, has begun to adopt "American" fracking. At the beginning of the market share fight, the country's oil firms weren't even considered contenders because they had so many declining Soviet-era oil fields cluttering their books. But after snubbing OPEC’s offer to collaborate and prop up prices, Russia has been easily keeping up with the cartel by pumping at the fastest pace since the Soviet Union's collapse. According to Bloomberg, even though US and EU sanctions cut access to foreign financing and technology, the Russians have managed to squeeze more crude out of some of the country’s old fields for several years. Part of the reason is that Russia had imported lateral drilling and fracking from the US for several years (along with a timely drop in the ruble). While vertical fracking had been used in Siberia for ages, once it was coupled with horizontal drilling, the synergies helped Russian producers recover 15 percent more crude from aging reservoirs. Before TNK-BP was absorbed into Rosneft in 2013, it used hydraulic fracturing along with horizontal drilling in almost half the wells that year, a sixfold increase in just two years. Adoption has spread throughout the rest of the industry. Rosneft employed the technique at 50 wells in 2013, up from just three in 2012. At the same time, Gazprom Neft, the oil unit of Russia’s natural gas monopoly, doubled the number of horizontally fracked wells. “This is a very big change that has literally happened in the last year and a half,” said Gazprom Neft’s deputy chief executive officer. “We've made breakthroughs.” Rosneft is becoming more technologically advanced,” Igor Sechin, chief executive officer of Russia’s largest producer. By 2012 the company had undertaken 215 wells, adding about 19 million barrels of production. Lukoil planned to frack 450 horizontal wells over the next three years. “Everyone is now using horizontal wells because that’s the way to maximize returns,” said Lev Snykov, a partner at Greenwich Capital in Moscow, told Bloomberg. A fracking ecosystem All this know-how is coming from oil services companies like Houston-based Schlumberger, the world’s largest provider, which is vying with US rivals like Weatherford, Halliburton, and Russian operators led by C.A.T. Oil. Before sanctions, Schlumberger had 12 separate fracturing fleets — machines with crews — working in Russia. Russia's C.A.T., which had a market-leading share of 31 percent, had about 15. Schlumberger had helped a major Russian oil company in western Siberia improve drilling and field-development by using its advanced down-hole sensors to map exactly where underground fractures were spreading in a horizontal well. Four frack stages were used in the well and monitored from a second well using equipment that hears subtle seismic events underground. In the Russian town of Bugulma, Geneva-based Weatherford announced a partnership last year with an electric-pump plant to make artificial lift systems, which are used to boost pressure and increase output from flagging wells. Halliburton has announced a partnership with Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas to provide “state-of-the-art” support, including staff for technical boards and educational material for the school’s unconventional program. Sanction buster While Russia clearly needs Western technology and expertise for offshore exploration, the sanctions may be less effective in stopping onshore shale development, with Russian officials arguing that most of the technology the country needs is becoming available domestically, or from non-Western sources such as China. The head of state Gazprom Neft, Alexander Dyukov, has argued that even with sanctions, the country would be able to produce 1 million barrels per day from such formations by 2020-22. Russian companies need an additional 250-300 heavy drilling rigs and 50-60 rigs for hydraulic fracturing, he acknowledged, but if these could not be produced domestically, they could be purchased instead from Asia, and in particular China. Rosneft takes a similar view. “The technology is so diverse and dispersed around the world that we don’t feel there will be a real impact,” the state oil giant’s first vice president for upstream operations, Eric Liron, said. Bigger than Ghawar If sanctions are lifted, Siberia's Bazhenov Formation comes into play. Everything about Bazhenov is huge — beyond Texas huge. It covers an area of almost 1 million square kilometers — the size of Texas and California combined. Bazhenov is estimated to hold more than 1.2 trillion barrels of oil, of which about 75 billion might be recoverable with current technology, making it the biggest potential shale play in the world, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. To put that in context, Bazhenov contains an estimated 10 times more recoverable oil than the famous Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana. Bazhenov could produce more oil than has so far been extracted from Ghawar, the super-giant field in Saudi Arabia that made the 20th century the age of petroleum. Unleashing Bazhenov Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Russia’s state-run gas exporter, said production from its Bazhenov shale formations could start in three years even if US sanctions are still limiting the sale and transfer of fracking technology. The company aims to produce about 40,000 barrels of crude a day from the deposits from 2018, Kirill Strizhnev, head of unconventional projects for Gazprom Neft, told reporters in Moscow. That’s about 2.7 percent of Gazprom Neft’s daily first-quarter output of 1.5 million barrels of oil equivalent. “Foreign companies are stronger in this type of drilling so it’s faster to do it with Western help,” said Alexei Vashkevich, head of geological exploration and resource base development at Gazprom Neft. “Can they be excluded? Yes, they can. Can we do it without them? Yes, we can. It will be a little harder and will take a little longer, but it’s possible.’ The company, which has drilled nine wells at Bazhenov, expects extraction costs to be similar to those of conventional deposits, Strizhnev said. Poaching petroleum engineers As collateral damage from Saudi Arabia's full-bore, take-no-prisoners pumping strategy, many US petroleum engineers and rig specialists with fracking experience have had to find new jobs. And Saudi Aramco has been trying to poach them all, which became evident last spring after the company posted a new job category — unconventionals — on its website to help the country play technology catch-up. It turns out that the Saudis fear damaging their legacy reservoirs by learning advanced shale drilling on the job. So to date, it's been slow-going as only eight shale gas wells have been drilled, with ambitious plans to drill 135 wells over the next three years waiting to be staffed. So they're trolling for experienced outsiders. Aramco also posted ads on Rigzone and LinkedIn that keyed in on on shale-smarts, and one listing quickly drew 160 applicants in a month. “Consider the opportunity to join our team and help shape the future of key global unconventional resource development,” the ads enthused, discreetly throwing in the towel as the oil price-war raged in the global media. Before the crash and mass layoffs, difficult living conditions made the country a really hard sell, Tobias Read, chief executive officer of Swift Worldwide Resources, told Bloomberg. “We’ve seen people who have been reticent to look at Saudi Arabia who are now more accepting of a job there,” he said. Adopting an "if you can't beat them, join them" policy, the Saudis, along with the rest of the world, will be learning to frack and drill the American way — horizontally — while trying to replace 900,000 barrels a day of domestic crude currently used to generate the Kingdom's electricity. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 November 27, 2019 Thanks for this article! I predicted worldwide fracking when I first learned about fracking through the grapevine during our last "oil crisis". That is also when I started promoting natural gas which is cheaper and cleaner than the oil itself. Later I started a topic called World Full of Energy, which examined all of our potential energy sources. I am still amazed by the ignorance of the peak oil prophets. The real issue is not peak oil, it is peak clean energy for low prices. See World Full of Energy https://docs.google.com/document/d/14vbzrzaGDe_frycPcQxMCNBkmiIzT-rxiL1izpXwGy4/edit Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 November 27, 2019 On 11/24/2019 at 5:43 PM, ronwagn said: Read the article please. They already frack! Sorry, I was getting groggy and forgot the link.https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/11/20/putin-well-never-frack/#6ee29583f014 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 November 27, 2019 (edited) On 11/24/2019 at 5:01 AM, A/Plague said: specify .. where does the water freeze? My understanding is that soil stops freezing a few feet below ground. The earth maintains the temperature. I am sure it is a lot deeper in polar regions however. http://urecon.com/applications/municipal_ambient_below.html Edited November 27, 2019 by ronwagn reference Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Gerry Maddoux + 3,627 GM November 27, 2019 52 minutes ago, ronwagn said: My understanding is that soil stops freezing a few feet below ground. The earth maintains the temperature. You're totally right. But even in the permafrost, the temperatures 10,000 feet down are very high--two-hundred degrees wouldn't be surprising. It's about one degree rise for every 30 feet down, once you get below a couple thousand feet. So Russia has a problem in the permafrost, but not much of one in the summer, and man, they're hitting some gargantuan wells. So big, in fact, that I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't tell OPEC to take a hike----their new field is probably much larger than anything the Saudis have. Additionally, they don't have the social cost that the Saudis have to pencil in. The Saudis can lift oil for under $12/bll, but then they have to get about $80 to cover all their deadbeat costs. The Russians don't have this, so while it costs them more to drill and lift, they have hit the mother lode. And trust me, they're fracking these big horizontal wells. We should be envious here in the US, because some of these things are huge and don't have the same rapid decline curve. They've got their own problems, though, and right now that seems to be all those damn organic chlorides. I still don't have a good handle on that. This used to be an inhibition issue, reversing the HCL that was used to stimulate the well. The inhibiting agent, as I understand it at least, resulted in organic chlorides. The Russians have a great tract record with one thing only: producing and transporting high quality crude oil and NG to Eastern Europe. But the organic chloride problem costs them billions. I imagine that comes from this new field, and that they have worked out the formula for stimulation but it has caused contamination to enter the equation. This is pertinent because their pipeline steel company (which has a subsidiary in Regina, Canada and supplied some of the pipe for the Keystone XL) has come up with a spun steel that uses a dopant to prevent corrosion. Mr. Kirkman posted on this yesterday and explained a lot about it. My personal suspicion is that this has to do with the chloride contaminants. Lots of speculation in all this, isn't there? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 November 27, 2019 Very interesting information. It supports the view that oil will be cheap for several more decades. Natural gas vehicle growth may be even slower than I hoped for. Then we have Iranian and Venezuelan oil, to think about, long term. Also many other finds. Fossil fuel is here to stay for a long term without great advances in other technologies. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Boat + 1,315 RG November 27, 2019 Ron demand growth is down to 1.2 mbpd or so. You don’t think alternative vehicles can cut 1.2 mbpd in 10 - 15 years? In developed countries peak oil pretty much has already happened. I could be wrong but electric semis will impact demand in 7-10 years. Electric transportation is still at the beginning of the beginning. Once scale hits the prices of these units will drop. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 November 29, 2019 On 11/27/2019 at 5:11 PM, Boat said: Ron demand growth is down to 1.2 mbpd or so. You don’t think alternative vehicles can cut 1.2 mbpd in 10 - 15 years? In developed countries peak oil pretty much has already happened. I could be wrong but electric semis will impact demand in 7-10 years. Electric transportation is still at the beginning of the beginning. Once scale hits the prices of these units will drop. I am all for alternative fuel vehicles as long as they make economic sense for the consumer without considering subsidies. I would be OK with subsidies for highly polluted areas though. I think natural gas is the better option for trucks though. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tomasz + 1,608 December 1, 2019 Of course thats simply a lie and Russia will frack like mad in the future. Because it has Bazhenov formation that according to estimates can produce 8 milions of barrels per day. Thats where russian future oil production will come from in a situations of natural deplete of mature western Siberia oil fields. We are in sanction regime so that may take a bit longer and be more complicated but I dont think western companies finally we resign to make such a good bussines because of Ukraine or Syria. Especially in a situation where chinese behemoth state companies are eager to take premium positions because of this sanctions. Maybe we need to wait 5 to 10 years. Ukraine goverment after election come to only sensible conclusion that Ukraine is former USSR nation and need to come to peace agreement with Russia. So no NATO accession nor acess to UE apart from noone sees Ukraine in western hemisphere. So at first peace in Ukraine than lifting of the sanctions or you want alternative such as russian-chinese alliance. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Gerry Maddoux + 3,627 GM December 1, 2019 On 11/27/2019 at 2:29 PM, ronwagn said: Then we have Iranian and Venezuelan oil, to think about, long term. China and Russia basically own Venezuela. Between the two of them, they have loaned Caracas huge sums of money, then restructured that debt, seemingly in the spirit of nations but really in order to gain control over the largest deposit of oil in the world. For China this represents great opportunity to import oil as a form of debt repayment. But China doesn't have the technical know-how to help jump-start the Venezuelan oil fields. Ah, but Russia does. Not to get too conspiracy theorist on you but China and Russia are collaborating on more and bigger projects, almost like a hand in a glove. For example, the One Belt/One Road Initiative by China extensively incorporates Russia: all of the trade routes start in China but most end in Russia. China has long held a warm water port on the tip of Pakistan. Russia is building an LNG transport system throughout Pakistan, in return for which they get to share that cozy little port with China. It just happens to be the gateway to the Arabian Sea. Russia has now hit this large field in the Arctic Ice Circle. China needs oil; Russia has it. The trade war that the US is waging against China, along with the US signature on papers supporting Hong Kong democracy, has turned Xi not only against using US soybeans, but oil and gas as well. When you look at US exports of fossil fuels to China, they've been declining for several months. I'm not taking partisan sides here, understand, just elaborating the growing relationship between China and Russia, and that extends--via a lending trail--to Venezuela. The more China and Russia bond, the more the US is shut out. Iran is tighter than a tick with the Russians. Under sanction, Iranian ghost ships kept on delivering crude oil to China. This is pretty scary stuff, because I agree with Ron that fossil fuels are going to drive the energy needs of the world for decades to come. Think about what just happened. The entire US was engulfed by cold weather and either rain or snow. Without fossil fuels people are going to freeze in vast numbers. In fact, if someone like Elizabeth Warren were to--God help us--gain control of the Oval, and if somehow--God help us again--the Democrats were to gain a majority of the House and Senate, and if she held true to her campaign promise to ban fracking, well, ladies and gentlemen, we'd be held hostage by Saudi Arabia just like the good old days or we'd have people either dying from the heat or the cold. For all the vituperative venom spread across these pages by shale-haters, that's currently about the only game in town, in the US. The GOM offshore is great, as is the new find on the North Slope of Alaska, but the offshore is a fraction of the total needs of the US and the Alaska stuff won't hit the pipelines for years. I mean, I read all these scary stories on oilprice.com--they make me want to throw up in my mouth; where do these people come from, talking about EV's taking over, that we've got maybe five years or we're going to burn up the planet, or all these crazy fanatics talking about the Paris Accord, Jane Fonda holed up in NYC raving about climate change. I'll bet Jane couldn't tell you about the maritime SOX discharge if you offered to erase the Hanoi Jane descriptor from her bibliography. We've got clean-burning natural gas enough for the world, if you throw in a little from Qatar. What in the name of a Holy God are all these people smoking? Well, this has turned into my own personal rant, but at least it makes sense . . . at least to me. And very damn little does these days! For the sake of the planet, by all means let's encourage the go-ahead of the IMO-2020 MARPOL plan, not allow Putin or someone else push it out. But for the sake of the people inhabiting the planet, let's not take a bazooka to fossil fuels. I'm perfectly amenable to hydrogen fuel cells, nuclear, wind, solar, and lithium batteries, but I'm also well aware that most of these other ideas are going to die a natural death and fossil fuels have taken us from the Dark Ages to now: think pharmaceuticals, tires, plastics, our entire way of life. Let's figure out a way of using fossil fuels in a low carbon, low sulfur, low nitrogen oxide way. Don't just roll over and give up. This has become our world. I don't want to own the last buggy whip factory but I certainly would like to at least see evidence that a Brave New World is ready to take the place of this one before we jack it up and remove the wheels. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Old-Ruffneck + 1,177 er December 2, 2019 (edited) On 11/27/2019 at 4:17 PM, Gerry Maddoux said: You're totally right. But even in the permafrost, the temperatures 10,000 feet down are very high--two-hundred degrees wouldn't be surprising. It's about one degree rise for every 30 feet down, once you get below a couple thousand feet. The earth is fairly stable temperature wise. At about 15k feet temps are around 115 degrees, at 26k feet add about 15 degrees. Not enough temp to burn you. Now you go much further down and then the temps rise rapidly. But in West Texas not much oil at 30k feet, and very little NG. I worked on a Penrod rig on Sanderson highway 35 miles out of Ft. Stockton s.e. I left the rig when we were at 26k, in 80 the drilling was so slow and all they were doing was setting records. Lotta pipe to trip!! Edited December 2, 2019 by Old-Ruffneck add Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Martin + 31 December 2, 2019 (edited) The obvious response to Putin seems to be, "Frack off!" 😀 Edited December 2, 2019 by Martin Fixed typo. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
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